Lindsay didn't think asking someone for their full name was a particularly scandalous thing to do. If she had, she wouldn't have asked. She wasn't in the business of intentionally making people feel uncomfortable. The thing was, Lindsay didn't even have a middle name. She did have two surnames, but that wasn't quite the same. She had no embarrassing secret 'Mildred' or 'Harriet' between the 'Lindsay' and the “Ward-Darling.” There was nothing there at all. It just didn't occur to her that someone would be ashamed of their own name.  “No, no that's fine,” she assured him, since his point about the name he actually used being more significant than the name he was given was actually legitimate. It would yield slightly different results, but nothing that wasn't accurate in it's way. She was pretty sure that tomorrow at lunch the best she'd be able to do for him would be to whip up the most elementary reading possible, which probably wouldn't tell him a single thing he didn't know – she couldn't give him anything beyond the obvious if he wasn't willing to do the same. That was the way arithmancy and life both seemed to work – you got out what you put in. 

Aside from arithmancy, Lindsay also had an interest in families. She'd had a slightly sheltered upbringing out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by her gaggle of siblings. She had a large extended family, but each individual unit in that large family was vastly different from one another, and diversity in families intrigued her. Lindsay had wanted a family of her own for as long as she could remember and, growing up, when she wasn't hanging upside down from the swing set and giving her mother a heart attack, she was coercing her brothers into playing house with her (which looked a lot like her brothers doing whatever they wanted while she muttered to herself about imaginary sleeping babies and cleaning the dishes). As soon as Nigel told her his family was complicated, he had her ear. 

She wasn't expecting his family situation to be quite that complicated, however. For a moment she wasn't sure what to say. It sounded like he didn't have much of a family at all, to be honest. “That's – no, um – that's fine, love. You shouldn't worry,” she managed, resisting the urge to apologize. She always over-apologized, and in most cases that wasn't a problem – but in some cases, such as this one, an apology was a judgment, and even though she was judging his unfortunate family situation and felt infinitely sorry for him, it didn't feel like her place to tell him so. She couldn't imagine growing up without her dad – or with more than one stepfather – and with siblings she didn't even know! Life must have been lonely for Nigel, the poor thing. She looked over at him sympathetically, wishing there was something she could do for him besides give him a dumb arithmancy reading – like adopt him, for example. 

“I'm sorry!” she finally blurted out. She was unable to contain herself. “I only meant to cheer you up. I didn't want to bring up anything sad like that,” she rambled, seeming to make up for withholding her apology by apologizing extra. Her hands were clenched into tight, nervous fists at her sides. “We can work everything out tomorrow, if you still want to. There's no need to write anything down before then. We can sort it out when you get there,” she suggested, trying to be extra accommodating now that she knew how miserable his life was, as though writing down his name and birthday was hard work and she didn't want him to be bothered. “Only if you still want to.” 


we don't realize our faith in the prize unless its been somehow elusive
how swiftly we choose it - the sacred simplicity of you at my side